Vintage Murder

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Who told you this story? What morning?”

  “The morning you arrived in Middleton. Your conversation was overheard. Now, please answer. Believe me I know altogether too much for there to be anything but disaster in your evasion. You will damage yourself and Hambledon, perhaps irrevocably, if you try to hold out.” He paused staring at his own thin hands clasped about his knees. “You think, of course, that I am trying to trap you, to frighten you into a sort of confession. That may be true, but it is equally true that I am trying to help you. Can you believe that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “The local police have heard the story of your conversation with Hambledon. They know where the tiki was found. They will learn, soon enough, that you had it on your person after the supper-party. And believe me, they will regard any further attempts at evasion with the very greatest suspicion.”

  “What have I done!”

  “Shall I tell you what I believe you to have done last night? After the catastrophe you went to your dressing-room. At first the shock was too great for you to think at all clearly, but after a minute or two you did begin to think. Hambledon had taken you to your dressing-room. In a minute I would like you to tell me what he said to you. Like everyone in the cast but yourself, he had been told about the champagne bottle, and knew how it was to be worked. Whatever he may have said, you sent him away saying that you wanted to be quite alone. I think that almost at once the suspicion came into your mind, the suspicion that Hambledon may have brought about the catastrophe. I know that as you left the stage you heard Gascoigne repeating that there had been foul play, that it could not have been an accident. You have told me that you are familiar with the mechanics of the stage, that very often you have actually helped with the scenery. I wonder if you thought you would go up to the grid and find out for yourself. Everyone else was in the dressing-rooms except Mason, Gascoigne, Dr. Te Pokiha, and myself, and we were still on the stage, hidden behind the walls of the set. Perhaps you were still too shocked and agitated to think very coherently or wisely; but overwhelmed with this dreadful suspicion, scarcely aware of the risk you ran, you may have slipped round to the back of the stage and climbed the ladder to the gallery.”

  He paused for a moment, watching her. Her head was bent down and inclined away from him. Her fingers plucked at the fringe of the rug.

  “Stop me if I’m wrong,” said Alleyn. “I fancy you climbed up to the grid and saw the end of rope close to the pulley, and perhaps tripped over the weights which had been left on the gallery floor. With your knowledge of stage mechanics you at once realised what had been done. The counterweight had been removed and the bottle had fallen unchecked.”

  A strand of the woollen fringe broke in her fingers.

  “At this moment we had all moved off the stage into the wings. With some distracted notion of trying to make the whole thing look like an accident you hooked a weight to the ring. While you stooped to pick up the weight, the tiki fell from your dress on to the platform, and lodged between the slats where I found it soon afterwards. Am I right?”

  “I—I—would rather not answer.”

  “That is as you choose. I must tell you that I am bound to lay this theory before the local police. I have perhaps exceeded my duty in talking about it to you. You asked me last night if I was your friend. I told you that I would give you my help if in return you would give me your confidence. I assure you very solemnly that it is as your friend I urge you to tell me the truth and—really it is the only phrase that fits—the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  “They can’t prove any of this,” she said vehemently. “Why shouldn’t this weight have been there all the time? Why shouldn’t it have been an accident? If it was too light—”

  “But how did you know it was too light?”

  She caught in her breath with a sort of sob.

  “You see,” said Alleyn gently, “you’re not cut out for this sort of thing. So you knew it was much too light when you hooked it on? That was very quick and very intelligent How did you know that? I wonder. The whole scheme had been kept a secret from you—”

  Suddenly he stopped, resting his elbow on the ground beside her, and looked into her averted face.

  “So you knew about the plan all the time?” he said softly.

  She was trembling now, as though she were very cold. He touched her hand lightly, impersonally.

  “Poor you,” said Alleyn.

  Then she was clinging to his hand and weeping very bitterly.

  “I’ve been wicked—a fool—I ought never—now you’ll suspect him more than before—more than if I had done nothing. You’ll think I know. I don’t know anything. He’s innocent. It was only because I was so shocked. I was mad, even to dream of it. He couldn’t do that—to Alfie. You must believe me—he couldn’t. I was mad.”

  “We don’t suspect Hambledon more than anyone else.”

  “Is that true? Is it? Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I hadn’t blundered in, perhaps you would never have suspected him? It’s my fault—”

  “Not quite that. But you have made it a bit more complicated; you and your fancy touches.”

  “If only you would believe me—if only I could put it right—”

  “If Hambledon is innocent you can put a number of things right by answering my questions. There, that’s better. Look here, I’m going to give you ten minutes to dry your eyes and powder your nose. Then I’ll come back and finish what I’ve got to say.”

  He jumped lightly to his feet, and without another word strode off towards the little gorge where the bush came down to the lip of the stream. He turned uphill, and after a short climb, he entered into the bush. It was all that remained of a tall forest. Boles of giant trees stood like rooted columns among the heavy green underbrush, and rose high above it into tessellated clusters of heavy green. Light and dull green were the tree-ferns, light and dull green the ferns underfoot. There was something primal and earthy about this endless interlacing of greens. It was dark in the bush, and cool, and the only sound there was the sound of trickling water, finding its way downhill to the creek. There was a smell of wet moss, of cold wet earth, and of the sticky sweet gum that sweated out of some of the tree trunks. Alleyn thought it a good smell, clean and pungent. Suddenly, close at hand, the bird called again—a solitary call, startlingly like a bell. Then this unseen bird shook from its throat a phrase of notes in a minor key, each note very round with something human in its quality.

  The brief song ended in a comic splutter. There was a sound of wings. Then the call rang again and was answered from somewhere deep in the bush, and back into the silence came the sound of running water.

  To Alleyn, standing there, it suddenly seemed absurd that he should have withdrawn into such a place as this, to think of criminal investigation and to allow a woman time to recover from the effects of her own falsehoods. It was an absurd juxtaposition of opposites. The sort of thing a very modern poet might fancy. “The Man from the Yard in the Virgin Bush.” “I should have worn a navy blue suit, tan boots and a bowler, and I should complete the picture by blowing on a police whistle in answer to that intolerably lovely bird. Some avant-guardist would do the accompanying decorations. I’ll give her another five minutes to think it over, and, if the spell works, she’ll come as clean as the week’s wash.” He felt in his pocket for his pipe and his fingers encountered the box that held the tiki. He took the squat little monster out. “This is the right setting for you, only you should hang on a flaxen cord against a thick brown skin like Te Pokiha’s. No voluptuous whiteness for you, under black lace, against a jolting heart. That was all wrong. You little monstrosity! Sweaty dark breasts for you, dark fingers, dark savages in a heavy green forest. You’ve seen a thing or two in your day. Last night was not your first taste of blood, I’ll be bound. And now you’ve got yourself mixed up in a pakeha killing. I wish to hell I knew how much you do mean.”

  He lit his p
ipe and leant against the great column of a tree. The stillness of the place was like the expression of some large and simple personality. It seemed to say “I am” with a kind of vast tranquillity. “It is quite inhuman,” he thought, “but it is not unfriendly.” He remembered hearing tales of bushmen who were brought far into the forest to mark trees for the sawmills, and who were left to work there for a week but returned in three days, unable to endure the quiet of the forest.

  It was easier to think of these things than of the murder of Alfred Meyer, and Alleyn was repopulating the bush with wandering Maoris, when he was startled by the sound of snapping twigs and hurried footsteps.

  It was Carolyn, stumbling, in her thin shoes and fine black dress, through the tangled underbrush. She did not see him for several seconds and there was that in her face which made him feel that he must not watch her unseen.

  “Hullo!” he called. “Here I am.”

  She turned, saw him, and stumbled towards him.

  “I saw you come in here. I couldn’t bear to be alone. It’s quite true—everything you said. I’ll tell you everything, but Hailey is innocent. I’ll tell you everything.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Carolyn Moves Center

  CAROLYN TOLD HER story as they sat by the sweet-smelling embers of the fire. The sun was bright on the river-bed, but it was still too early in the spring for the day to be unpleasantly hot. As she began to speak, a man came down the gully, followed by three panting sheep-dogs. The man’s old felt hat was tilted over his nose. His jacket was slung across his shoulder and his shirt was open at the neck. He carried a long stick and moved with a sort of loose-jointed ease, as though he had been walking for a long time but was not particularly tired. Against the white glare of the shingle his face and arms were vermilion. He gave them “good-day” with a sideways wag of his head. The dogs trotted past with an air of preoccupation, saliva dripping from their quivering tongues.

  “I suppose,” thought Alleyn, “he imagines we are a courting pair and wonders if he has interrupted an amorous scene, instead of—”

  “—so I was frightened.” Carolyn went on when the musterer was beyond earshot. “You see there had been another scene that morning—yesterday morning. I can’t believe it was only yesterday—my birthday. Hailey brought me my present. Something I said started him off again. We were alone in my sitting-room. Alfie had just gone out. He—he was all thrilled about his party and he kissed me before he went and was rather possessive. I think that upset Hailey. He was angry and then—violently demonstrative. He said he’d got to the end of his tether—all the old things over again only he was so—so vehement. I wish I was better at explaining myself—I am afraid to tell you exactly what he said because then you may not understand how I can be so certain, now, that Hailey is innocent. You will think I am only saying I know he is innocent because there is nothing else left for me to do.”

  “Try me,” suggested Alleyn.

  “I must try to explain myself first, my own thoughts from the time Hailey left me yesterday morning until after last night. The next thing to tell you is that, in a way, I knew about the champagne. My poor old boy!” Her voice shook for a moment and her lips parted in an uncertain smile. “He tried so hard to keep it a secret but he was bursting with mysterious hints. I knew there was some plan, and yesterday morning I went down to the theatre and walked in at the stage-door when they were in the middle of rehearsing the surprise. He and George, and Ted and Hailey, and some of the staff. That—that horrible thing—the champagne—you know—must have been hanging there, but out of sight, and they had the weights on the other end of the cord. There were two weights on it and Alfie said: ‘That’s pounds too much. Take one off.’ I couldn’t think what it was about and I just stood watching. They didn’t see me. Ted Gascoigne took one weight off and the other shot up. They just grabbed it in time. It was very funny—seeing them all rush at it. Alfie swore frightfully and I stayed to see, thinking I’d rag him about it afterwards. At last they found the right weight—a single big one. We use three in the first act, you know. The masts and funnels of the yacht are let down with the small ones and the big one is used as a guide for the bridge. They are painted different colours to distinguish them. When they are not in use they are left up above. I heard them say this while I watched. It sounds as though it was a long time but it was only a few moments, I think, before he—my husband—turned and saw me. I said: ‘What do you fellows think you are up to?’ and he became so mysterious, I guessed it was something to do with me. I didn’t let them see that I guessed—he would have been so disappointed.”

  She paused, compressing her lips. She raised her hand and pressed the palm against her mouth.

  “Take it easy,” said Alleyn.

  “Yes. When I saw the cord fastened to the table, I guessed it was something to do with all this business with the weights. Then afterwards—afterwards! Mr. Alleyn, I think I went a little mad after it had happened. I could only see three things, and I saw them so horribly clearly, like the things one sees in nightmares. Hailey, angry and excited yesterday morning, Hailey, looking on while they fixed the weights, and—and what happened. That last picture. I sent him away from my dressing-room and then I got rid of Susie. I went out to the stage and I could hear Ted say over and over again: ‘There must have been some funny business.’ I think he was speaking to you. I thought I must see for myself there and then. In a way my mind was quite clear but it was a sort of delirious clarity. I went round to the back of the stage, took my shoes off, and climbed the ladder. When I reached the top platform I saw at once that the weight had been taken off the hook. I remembered how the smaller weight had shot up, and I thought: ‘If I put it on, it will look like an accident. It will look as if, in the hurry after the first act, they used the small weight instead of the large one.’ The stage down below was clear. I was just going to do it when I heard someone climbing the ladder on the prompt-side. That was just after Hailey had left the stage, and I thought it was Hailey. I stayed still but whoever it was—”

  “Me,” said Alleyn.

  “You? Oh, what a fool I was! I thought it was Hailey. You went away without getting off the ladder. Then I crept along the platform. I could see the stage. Ted had gone to meet the police—I heard him speak to them. No one was on the stage. I hooked on the small weight—I knew it would be ever so much lighter than even the empty bottle. Then I went down. Ted was still speaking to the detectives. They had gone on the stage and you were standing in the first entrance. I slipped round behind a flat into the dressing-room passage. When I got to my room, Hailey was there. He said he had been waiting there for me, and I told him I had been looking for him, and I sent him for Susie, and then for you.”

  “Yes,” said Alleyn. “That all fits. Now will you tell me, please, what made you change your mind. Why are you now so certain that he is innocent?”

  “Because—this is what you will find so strange—because of what he said to me last night when we got back to the hotel. He said: ‘Carolyn, someone has killed Alfred. There’s not a possibility of accident. Someone has altered the weights.’ We were both quiet for a moment and then he said: ‘Yesterday—this morning—if I had known he was going to die I would have thought of you and—what I might gain—and now—I can only think of him.” As soon as he had spoken, it was as though my brain cleared. I cannot describe how it was. I simply knew that he was quite innocent. I was so ashamed that I had ever thought he might be anything else. He stayed a little while, talking quietly about Alfie and our early days together. When he went away he said”—for a moment the deep voice faltered. Then she made an impatient movement with her head. “He said: ‘You know I love you, Carolyn, but I am glad now that we did nothing to hurt him.’”

  There was a long pause. Carolyn seemed to be lost in her own thoughts. She had become much more composed, and Alleyn thought that while she was alone she must have deliberately set in order the events that she had made up her mind to relate. He realised that
physically, as well as emotionally, she was exhausted.

  “Shall we go back?” he asked gently.

  “First tell me: Can you—do you understand how certain I am of Hailey’s innocence? Does what I have said count at all?”

  “Yes. It has impressed me very deeply. I am quite sure that you have told me what you believe to be the truth.”

  “But you—what do you believe?”

  “You must remember that I am a policeman. I attach a great deal of importance to what you have told me, but I would like very much to establish an alibi for the period before the supper-party.”

  “For Hailey?”

  “For Hambledon, certainly.”

  He looked at her. “Has she got no thought at all for herself?” he wondered. “Can’t she see? Or is she, after all, very, very clever?”

  “Hailey was in his dressing-room,” said Carolyn. “It is next to mine. I heard him send his dresser away. Wait! Wait! Let me think. Last night when that detective asked me questions I could only think about the other time. Wait! When he told Bob—that’s his dresser—that he could go, I said to Minna, my maid, that I could manage without her. She helped me off with my dress and then she went out, and she and Bob were talking in the passage. I called out to her to hurry and get ready, and she went off, I think to Susie’s room. Then—yes, I called out to Hailey through the wall and he answered. He answered.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Something about—what was it!—Yes. I said: ‘Hailey—I’ve just remembered. I’ve asked the Woods to the party and nobody knows. How awful!’ And he called back: ‘Not Woods—Forrest.’ I always call people by their wrong names, you see. Then I asked him to go and tell someone about the Forrests and he said he would as soon as he had taken off his make-up. He said he had got grease-paint on his collar and would have to put on a clean one. We had to shout to hear each other. Someone else will have heard. Who is on the other side of Hailey?”